Imperator Page 3

  “I think not.”

  “I don’t care what you think, human. This is my space, and I will do what needs to be done to keep lesser species in line.”

  “This is no longer your space.”

  “Says who?”

  “The cheetahs are joining the Imperium because they no longer believe the Keerah can stop the Trixone from destroying them.”

  “Treason!”

  “Not from where I’m sitting.”

  “You will remove your ship from in front of me, or I’ll fire on you.”

  “You’ll try. And if you do, you break the just signed non-aggression treaty.”

  “I’ve been informed of no such treaty. Get out of my way now, or suffer the consequences.”

  “Not happening. If you have a battlestations condition, I suggest you go to it.”

  “Huh. We are battle ready always. But how will such a small ship test how ready we are?”

  “Oh it won’t. But you’ll be in battle with the Trixone very shortly.”

  “The Trixone are no-where near this area of space.”

  “Perhaps not, but I can arrange for you to fight them. If you turn around now, I will send you back the way you came. If not, you will fight the plants. Choose.”

  “Get out of my way, little human.”

  “Fine.”

  I nodded to Jane, and she closed the channel.

  This time my staff appeared in my hand, and I created a rift very close in front of the fleet, with the other end at one of the Keerah block points currently under attack. The fleet vanished through it a few seconds later, and the rift vanished. Jane zoomed in the navmap there, and six dots joined the fight, hitting a Trixone fleet from an unengaged side. In less than a minute, all six ships were damaged and retreating towards their own lines.

  No-one commented. But it did highlight we did need to block the Keerah from getting into this area of space again, as fast as possible. The jumps began again.

  Several hours later, I put the last jump point change into place. It created a pocket of space with some hundred and fifty inhabited planets within it, including some non-big cat species who were trading partners of one cat species or another, and who’d been consulted about where they wanted to be. Most had opted to stay trading with the cats, but some had decided to stay with the Keerah.

  Jane took us next to the panther station which was to be connected to the trading network. For the second time, my staff appeared for this task, as I connected a coms only rift between the station and Terminus. With that in place, communications were speeded up significantly, and Syrinx would be able to more easily connect the station rifts. Where a rift already existed, creating new ones to the same place was a lot easier. When long distances were concerned, the first one was the hardest. Although not for me. Kali’s Sceptre, in the shape of my staff, meant I seemed to have no real distance limitations for doing rifts. At least within this galaxy.

  Jane started jumping us home, and the final jump came out with us directly over the top of BigMother, now out of the shipyard and parked a short way away. Within seconds, a much larger ship jumped in above us, and I flinched. Exclamations of shock and surprise came from the room behind us.

  “Jane!” yelled Amanda, and she grinned.

  Trust AI’s to do precision jumping to precise timing, and scare the shit out of people. I shot Jane a glance. She was doing more and more of these sort of things, and as far as I could tell, it was all funny to her. With things like painting Chaos pink, and this little stunt, I was beginning to wonder if Jane was going to need a therapist. Mind you, she saw everything, and the death toll from her perspective was a million times what we considered horrific. So any humour which kept her sane was probably a good thing. As long as no-one got hurt.

  The ship now above us turned out to be Orion’s Belt, and she immediately launched seventy two fighters. And jumped straight out again. The fighters formed up into twelve ship squadrons, and formed a queue for landing. Jane meanwhile was docking us to a droid airlock off deck two. I checked the last two squadrons, and as I thought, they had no pilots, making them either Jane squadrons, or spares in case we lost some. Or both. BigMother could launch twenty four at a time, and forty eight within ten seconds, thanks to the launch tube redesign Dreamwalker had done to Claymore, and which was now standard for all the carriers below titan size. The last twenty four would take a good half minute more to load into the tubes and launch. And they needed to be racked and stacked while any maintenance work was being done. Seventy two Excalibur fours didn’t leave a whole lot of room.

  They also took a lot longer to land, twelve at a time, because that was the number of elevators down to the maintenance deck BigMother had. I was back on the bridge before landing was even half completed. With nothing to do there, I continued into my ready room, where Jane popped up a vid of Lacey getting out of his Excalibur, looking like he was back in heaven.

  Back in the day, he’d been my best fighter pilot, after me, and marginally better than Greer and Miriam. It was one of the reasons I promoted him, and the reason why he hated being promoted. These days though, Chris Ecclestone and Grace were turning out to be the best fighter pilots of all of them, but Dreamwalker loved his Scimitar carrier, and Grace was reveling in her Scimitar hull based dreadnaught. The irony was, the hull design was nearly a hundred and fifty years old now, but was still proving to be very versatile.

  While I was musing, General Custer launched from Haven, and by the time the last of the fighters were landed, the assault frigate was docking to her custom dock above and behind the bridge. She had four full marine teams on board, and the remainder of team one, who proceeded to the deck zero marine facilities. The marine barracks hadn't been touched, where the pilot accommodations had been ripped out completely, and redone to Claymore’s specs. I’d asked the team leaders before BigMother went into the shipyard, but they’d been happy with the existing barracks, and it saved some room having needed to be found elsewhere.

  Homer and Bonko’s club were the next to leave Haven, jumping out to meet Orion’s Stars. The wayward fleet was already there, so Stars could join us on the next mission, without leaving a jump point vulnerable. I’d called back Claymore and Katana as well, to back up the same jump point. Daniel O’Neil had seniority, so would take over command there when Jack O’Neill left to join me.

  I could probably have used Fearless as well, but she and the three Explorer ships were at a planet Jane had found being attacked while dropping comnavsats over in Ralnor space. The planet seemed to be a bit of a backwater, and wasn’t getting a huge amount of Trixone attention, which let my Dad cope with what they were sending without needing backup.

  The five Chaos class dreadnaughts, now under the command of Ron Greer in Havoc, were waiting in Redoubt for me to cut them loose. Annette had transferred to Turmoil from Sceptre, upsetting Lacey when I shifted him there to replace her, and which now had Sato in command. The new dreadnaughts all had experienced fighter pilots flying them, and the only reason I hadn't had more built was the lack of pilots to fly them. Now I was working towards getting the pilots, and hopefully shipyard space, I pinged Bob with a change in priorities again. He pinged back the ping equivalent of a raspberry.

  Any pilot could fly any of my ships, up to and including the titans, but only a few had the situational awareness to fly, and more importantly fight, them effectively. The majority of the pilots we had couldn’t handle anything above an Excalibur, and we still had pilots on Orion’s Belt struggling to make full use of them. It was something I was hoping to address soon, and in the meantime, the shipyard was concentrating on building battlestations.

  The last ship to jump in nearby was the largest of Jane’s drone freighters, and it docked immediately with the shipyard to fill up with comnavsats. Bob had a group of mages working full time there now, so it was mostly a matter of empty containers being magically moved off the ship, and replaced with full ones waiting for her. She’d barely undocked and started moving towards
BigMother, and another drone freighter jumped in, and moved towards the now empty dock. The huge task of adding the entire core galaxy to our live navmap was going to be an ongoing one for a long time to come. It would go faster if I allowed Jane to get more ships built to do the job, but we didn’t have the shipyard capacity.

  With the freighter in position behind BigMother, I took my place on the bridge. The seats were filled. In addition to the alpha team, including Annabelle, Hobbes and Roo were there, as were the CO and XO of each marine team, a Lufafluf major, and Willow.

  Willow was a tall slim looking woman, wearing shiny armour, which we now knew was actually made of her dragon skin. She’d arrived the day before with nineteen other dragons, and twenty wyvern, who’d been loaded onto General Slim, and sent off to Orion’s Stars. I was looking forward to seeing them in action when the marines deployed. We also had a battalion of Lufaflufs, and another mixed battalion of Imperium troops, which had just left on Homer and Bonko’s Club. General Hobbs was in command of them and the SAS teams, while Jack had command of Orion’s Stars. On the ground, Jack would command the infantry and team six, while Hobbs, being a two star to Jack’s one, oversaw from Stars. Anabelle would command the marine teams on BigMother, and Willow’s two platoons. At least in theory. I’d wait and see how it panned out.

  I’d wanted Hobbs on Fearless, but he’d preferred to stay on Stars, and I couldn’t really blame him. Instead, I’d sent a Lufafluf colonel to command the troops on the ground below Fearless, with my father in overall command in space. I trusted my people to know their jobs.

  With confirmation of Stars being ready to go, I nodded to Jane, and she opened a channel to Havoc, as she popped up the navmap for the area around Crossroads.

  “It’s Chaos time,” I said.

  “Let’s do it,” said Greer.

  The five dreadnaughts jumped out.

  Seven

  I’d watched Grace do this only a few days before.

  This time though, five ships were going in at once, instead of one. Jane had the view from the comnavsat at the jump point being taken first, up on a screen. All five dreadnaughts appeared at the same time, at alternating ends of the first five Trixone fleets from the jump point, and they sailed along the lines, strafing as they went, leaving destroyed ships behind them.

  At exactly the same time, all five ships jumped out, leaving nothing but debris around the jump point. The remaining five fleets ceased firing missiles, for the first time since they’d started missile spamming us days before. The amount of debris was such, very few of the last salvo had made it through the debris zone, and had in fact made the mess even worse by exploding on their own side of the jump point.

  Five more times they did this, jumping in unpredictably, and leaving five fleets worth of debris behind them. With only six places we were likely to hit, the Trixone were able to predict better, so the last one saw all the ships take a lot more hits. None of them were really threatened though. AI co-ordination at its finest, coupled with superb fighting skills.

  With pressure taken off our own block points for a while, at least until the Trixone cleaned up the mess, the five dreadnaughts joined the Wayward fleet so Orion’s Stars could join BigMother if we needed her. I suspected we would, but it was just guessing. Well, not guessing, preparing.

  With everyone in position, my staff appeared in my hand, and a titan sized rift appeared. I looked over to Jane, and nodded. She goosed us through, with the freighter following us.

  “Bingo,” said Jane, grinning.

  BigMother had appeared just under five hours away from a planet, so it was on the edge of our scanners. We were well above the plane of the system, so well away from any traffic which might detect us. Jane zoomed in on the planet.

  In orbit was a large station, an even larger shipyard, and what looked like a ship graveyard, containing hundreds of hulls of various sizes. Bingo indeed.

  I nodded again to Jane, and the freighter jumped to the side of the moon which couldn’t be seen from the stations, and deployed a comnavsat, before jumping away to confirm one of the jump points in the system. The comnavsat boosted itself into a high orbit, where it could see all the stations, and most of the space around the planet.

  Within a minute, comnavsats were at both jump points, and we had real time surveillance of the main traffic lane through the system. A minute later, the next system along was confirmed, its four jump points progressively went live, and the freighter kept jumping. The next system had two jump points, as did the one after.

  “And we have a winner,” said Jane.

  “Winner?” asked Amanda.

  “Two halves of a winner, actually.”

  “Explain,” I said.

  “I found an Explorer ship.”

  “Where?”

  “You remember that big asteroid next to the jump point in the War system?”

  I winced. So did most of the team.

  “Yes,” she went on. “The ship crashed on the asteroid, and broke its back.”

  “Salvageable?”

  A screen popped up showing us a view of a crocodile shaped ship, very similar to our own Explorer ships, or how they used to look. Not the same, but similar enough.

  “As far as I can tell, yes. There is nothing functional I can connect to, so I can only go by sensors. But the break looks fairly clean. No saying what the underside is like though. You want it?”

  “Yes.”

  Dozens of salvage droids launched from the freighter, and after positioning around both halves of the ship, lifted it off the asteroid. Another salvage droid swept the area where it’d been, collecting all the debris as well.

  I concentrated on opening a rift from there back to our shipyard, getting it as close as possible to the ship halves. The salvage droids pulled both ends through it, followed by the remaining debris, and I closed the rift behind them.

  Bob popped as a hollo on the console.

  “You found one?”

  “Indeed. Not where we expected, but probably in better condition for it. Some assembly required though.”

  He laughed.

  “How do you want any remains handled?”

  “Package for return to their families, if we can find them.”

  “Will do. Did you find a shipyard?”

  “We did.”

  He nodded while grinning, and the channel dropped.

  “Where the hell are we, Jon?” asked Alison, who was looking confused.

  “Treasure Chest,” said Jane. “And it looks like the system is still owned by pirates.” She looked at me. “Phase two?”

  “Go.”

  The freighter jumped, and before anyone could say anything more, the Brazil system began to go live on the navmap.

  “So, where are we?” asked Willow.

  “About twenty five thousand lightyears from your planet,” I answered, smiling as she registered surprise. “This is human space, which is spread along about forty thousand lightyears of a short spur off one arm of the galaxy.”

  “What are we doing here?” asked Roo.

  “We need resources. Especially troops and pilots. But we also need more shipyard capacity, and we hoped the one which used to be here before the timeline shift still was. And apparently it is. We’ll confirm pirate ownership, and if so, borrow their orbital assets.”

  There were a number of chuckles, and no-one wanted to clarify what borrow meant.

  “Phase two?” asked Hobbes.

  “Adding all of our space back into our comnavsat network. It’ll take a day or so, but we should soon know exactly what differences there are from the map we have, and any changes since the timeline shift. Jane has enough comnavsats on board to do the whole spine in one go. And since the jump points are very spaced out here, there isn’t the density problem we have in the core to slow the process down.”

  “Talking of that,” interrupted Jane, “There’s a Midway class escort carrier here like there was before. So it looks like the pirates, at least, have proce
eded along a similar development line. I’d like to requisition it before anyone gets any other ideas about how to use it.”

  “What for?”

  “It won’t be long before my drone freighters dropping comnavsats will be so far away, they’ll spend most of their time going back and forth for comnavsats. I was thinking of turning that Midway into a fabrication base I can keep out where the freighters are operating, parked in some convenient and safe asteroid belt, so it can make comnavsats fast enough to keep the freighters going at peak speed.”

  “I’ve no objection. I assume you’ll want a few more such fabricator ships?”

  “Yes, and any freighters I can convert easily as well.”

  “Let’s see what we can acquire.”

  “Confirmed.”

  Eight

  The station was definitely different.

  It was much more conventional than the one we’d captured last time we were here, well over a year ago now. There was a mixed lot of ships docked at it. As far as we could determine, the ship classes were similar designs to what we expected, and still based around the old wet navy look. So some things hadn't changed.

  “That’s not good,” said Jane.

  “What?” asked BA.

  “I can’t get in. Their firewalls are really good.”

  Strike one. I’d been counting on Jane being able to hack into the stations, and take them over the easy way. Apparently not.

  “Plan A flopped,” said Amanda.

  “Go to plan B,” said the rest of the team, with everyone laughing.

  I put my ‘not impressed with being mocked’ face on for a few moments, and went back to being serious.

  “Saddle up,” said Annabelle, herself not moving as the rest of the marines all jumped up, and ran out.

  Aline looked after them with a mournful expression on her face. For the first time since she’d moved to fleet, marines were deploying without her. Another difference was neither of us were being included in team coms this time. Annabelle was, and she’d be keeping me in the loop when we were not watching cams.